Jesse Kornbluth, Magazine Writer Who Covered Everything, Dies at 79
The article he was very proud of was “The woman who beat the Klan”, Published in the Times magazine in 1987, on Beulah Mae Donald, who caused the Ku Klux Klan to the murder of his son of 1981 – he was hanged by a tree, with his crack in his throat, and no one was accused of crime – and won.
In 2023, He wrote on how it came to that story. The Southern Poverty Law Center had sent a photo of Michael Donald, 19 years old, hanging on a tree, as a fundraising request. It was a horrible image, yet for months Mr. Kornblutth showed her on her fireplace. At the beginning he had no idea why he kept him there.
“Every time I looked at him,” he said, “I had to get away. It took me months to realize that the postcard was feasible. I should have done something about it.”
Jesse Lyle Kornblutth was born on January 4, 1946, in Queens, the eldest of two children. His father, Samuel Kornblutth, was a controller of Macy’s and his mother, Pearl (Greenwald) Kornblutth, worked first for her husband and then as a jacket buyer in another department store. The family often moved to Samuel’s work, to Kansas City, Houston and elsewhere.
Pearl Kornblutth wanted his children to go to Groton School, a preparation school, but, Mr. Kornbluth wrote at his death in 2020The eligible director said to her: “There is only one Jew in Groton” – a mathematics teacher. Milton Academy, Milton, Massachusetts, accepted both boys, after that both Harvard went. Jesse graduated in 1968, with a degree in English.
